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policy

The lesson of the last decade is that European migration policy changes at two speeds. Enforcement instruments move in weeks. Reception, legal capacity and distribution move in years, if at all. Ceuta will not reverse that asymmetry. It may, however, be the first event large enough to make the cost of the asymmetry impossible to file away.

• Internal border checks cost the European economy an estimated several billion euros a year in freight delays and cross-border commuting friction.
• Each reintroduction weakens the norm that made the next one unnecessary.
• Once controls exist, removing them requires a government to declare a problem solved — a claim no interior minister volunteers.